Sixty Eight Years
by StripeyJumper
Summary: Sixty-eight years ago, original Ultimate Life form Project Beryl had to be shut down for unavoidable curcumstances. In her place Shadow was created. Now, Berri wakes to find everything she knows gone. The one thing she does know? She was replaced. ShadXoc
1. The first Betrayal

**Okaaaaaaay. This chapter is a little shorter than I'd like, but whatever! It's chapter one, it"s allowed to be short! Shut up! Shut up and reeeeeeaaaaadddd! This is my first Sonic story. May it get heaps of reviews from shadow fangirls!**

**Shadow: I have fangirls?**

**KYYYYYYYAAAAAAA! Of course you have fangirls, you sexy hunk of junk!**

**George:**

**(\ /)  
(~.~)**

**Shut up, George! Oh, and before I forget....**

DISCLAIMER! If I owned Sonic, the dialogue wouldn't be nearly as cheesy. 

**Chapter One – The First Betrayal**

"Professor, is anything wrong?"

Professor Gerald Robotnik looked up from the files in his hands. "Hm, hm? No, my dear, nothing."

I frowned and looked at his face, lined with worry and sadness. Both bad signs. The Professor had been preoccupied lately. More than usual, I mean. And he had looked extremely nervous when he told me to come to the stasis room for a checkup. Not that I didn't see a checkup coming my way. These..._attacks_, for want of a better word, were becoming more frequent and worrying.

At first it was only when I was really, _really_ furious. And even then it was for all of a split second. Then it happened again, for longer this time. And again. And again. It continued until I lost control if I was just the slightest bit angry. The professor had warned me that I might have to spend some time in stasis. I wasn't scared. I mean, it was the Professor. He could fix anything. Couldn't he?

I stood still while the Professor attached the necessary wires to my arms and legs. Maria watched.

"Okay, my dear, time to go." The Professor said, patting my arm.

""Kay." I said happily. I decided that I would trust the Professor no matter what.

"See you soon, Berri." Maria said, a smile on her face.

"Bye!" I replied.

As unbreakable glass started to enclose the platform, I turned to say a quick goodbye to the professor before I dropped off to sleep.

When I saw his tears, I knew something was wrong. When the small chamber I was in started to fill up with not liquid copper sulfate for development but with ultra-pure water for storage, I knew what was really planned for me.

The Professor....the one I thought of as a father....was shutting me down. Shutting me _down_. I pressed my hands to the glass and stared disbelievingly at him. The water was almost up to my waist. As soon as my nose was covered I would lose consciousness and I had a sneaky suspicion that I wouldn't wake up again.

Maria was also startled. She ran next to the Professor and glanced between him and my tank.

"Grandfather! Wh-what....that's ultra-pure water!" Maria's voice was muffled by the glass, but I could still hear her.

"Maria, dear granddaughter, I have something to tell you...." his reply was soft.

"What is it?"

"I'm sorry, my child. I lied. I'm shutting Project Beryl down."

"Shut-Shutting down...Berri? B-but...why?"

"It is, my dear, all my fault. I programmed her with the wrong energy, and too much of it."

"What do you mean? Grandfather!" Maria had tears in her eyes now.

The Professor shut his eyes. You know already that I completely drained two chaos emeralds of their power to give to her. I came across no problems doing this. But it was only when Project Beryl's symptoms started that I realized my mistake."

The ultra-pure water had come over my nose and my vision started to fuzz. I fought to stay conscious as the conversation continued, but could only hear snatches of it.

"-like magnets. The two emeralds that I....repelled and kept out....but as....too much energy...."

"...You have _fixed_ her?!"

A pause. Then, "....Project Shadow....replacement."

Project Shadow? My replacement? Was that what he said? Project Shadow...he was the project in room 126, right...? Maria showed him to me. But...the Professor said....he was going to be my companion...what....?

Maria, too, sounded outraged. "Grandfather!....._dare_ you!"

The Professor lost his temper, or so it sounded like. ".....More frequent!.....week, when she.... earrings...." he paused. "Project Shadow.....Ultimate.....form. I"m sorry."

I fully lost consciousness for a bit, and only by a sheer force of will was I able to tune back in for a few seconds. But only to hear the door close and the click of locks. The gentle sobbing of Maria from the other side.

"Sayonara.....Berri the Hedgehog."

Then....nothing.

A masculine voice I didn't recognize. "What's this door?"

Maria's. "Oh....that-that's where we keep failed projects..."

Failed projects? Was I a....

Maria's voice again. "I often wonder what it's like down there."

The same masculine voice. "What do you imagine it to be?"

The Professor's voice this time. "As Ultimate Life form, your abilities are not just of a normal hedgehog...."

Again the masculine voice, gently chuckling. "Yeah....I noticed that."

Ultimate...?....Ah.....this voice must be my......replacement....

Shouting. running. Shooting. The Professor's mad, mourning cries.

"Maria! Maria, my granddaughter!"

More shooting.

Silence. For a long, long time.

I could sense chaos emeralds, and a greater force, perhaps the master emerald. A loud, piercing cry of the Prototype. Why was….? Violent rumbling. Was the ARK...moving? Voices.....over the loudspeaker.

The rumbling stopped....the aura of the chaos emeralds....disappeared.

Movement near the ARK. I sensed a large mass, maybe a meteor or comet. Quiet again.

The sealed door was suddenly blasted off its hinges by a large explosion that shook the stasis tank. Through the broken doorway strode an extremely fat man flanked by two robots at either side of him. The man was ugly, with a long, pointy nose that somehow supported his sunglasses without arms, and his mustache, as always, looked like somebody had stuffed a squirrel up his nose. He was tall, bald and evil.

Dr. Eggman (for of course, it was he) strode over to the monitor still active after all this time. He scrolled through Project Beryl's file. He took note of her personality, likes and dislikes, belongings, level of education, attacks, and special abilities. All fine. But her physical condition....now this was interesting. Loses her mind when even slightly angry? He scrolled down to the reason of Project termination. As he read his eyes glinted with a brilliant idea. The project's abilities were quite amazing. This girl could quite easily blow Shadow out of the water. Dr. Eggman downloaded all of this information onto a disk and put it in his pocket. Yes, this girl was perfect. He studied her features. Shadow was quite obviously a male mirror image of her. In fact except for this Beryl's - or "Berri" as she apparently liked to be called - colours, she could have _been _Shadow. Where his skin was black hers was hot pink, where his was red, hers was black. And unlike any of those other bratty talking animals, the area around her mouth and inside her ears was nut brown.

From the corner of his eye he caught the slightest of movements. He looked up to her eyes, which were rolling around behind her eyelids.

"Ah," he mused. "She's dreaming."

**Right! End Of Chapter One! Review and you win a....*looks randomly around room* STAPLER! THAT"S RIGHT, FOLKS! YOU COULD BE A WINNER! Or, at another approach, review or I kill you!**

**Well, I'll send George to kill you, anyway. Isn't that right, George? Yes it is! Coochie-coo!**

**George:**

**(\ /)  
(^.^)**

**Right. Now for chapter two…**


	2. Explanations

**OMFG! 4 reviews after the first chapter! That was SO totally not what I was expecting. So thank you to chojisgirl, 400wings, Kokoro-no-sakura-chan, and Hannahmgp-sama! Yayz! You reviewed! Sorry if I took a while to update. I'm also thinking up fanfics for Naruto, Inuyasha, and NiGHTS Thanx for bing patient!**

**On to the story!**

Disclaimer: Sorry, your princess is in another castle....

**Chapter 2 - Explainations**

I woke up and immediately bolted upright. My eyes flickered wildly around the room and lay to rest on a fat, bald man with a big mustache sitting beside my bed.

'Professor!' I exclaimed. 'Wh-what happened? Wh-'

The man put up his hand for silence. Now that I looked at him, he wasn't the Professor at all. For one thing, he was younger. his mustache was bright orange (ugh) and his outfit was red (ugh). I didn't say this out loud though.

'Oh! I-I'm sorry, sir! Who are you?'

The man didn't answer. He turned and picked up a bundle of clothes which he gave to me. 'You'd better put these on, my Dear....' he said a bit awkwardly.

I realized I was completely naked and blushed scarlet. Dammit, of course I was! I'd just come out of stasis, idiot! This poor man, he'd been very careful not to look anywhere but my face, too! I immediately took more of a liking towards this guy. Maybe he could tell me what was going on.

The man turned his back while I got dressed. 'To answer your question, my name is Dr. Eggman.'

And a very fitting name it is too, I thought. 'Well, you probably know this already, but I'm Berri.'

'Yes, your file did say something about liking to be called Berri.'

'You can turn around now.'

He did so and put on a serious face. 'Now, I suppose you're wondering what's going on here.'

'Yeah. Kinda.'

'My Dear, you've been handed a very raw deal indeed.'

I frowned. Raw deal? I remembered my tank being filled with ultra-pure water, but surely that was a mistake? 'How so?' I asked.

He paused. 'You've been in stasis for sixty-eight years.'

I choked on absolutely nothing. 'Sixty-eight.....what the hell to you _mean_, sixty-eight years?!'

He paused again. '.....My birth name was Ivo Robotnik.'

'I-Ivo? _Ivo?_ But....but I celebrated your first birthday just last _week!_' I dropped to my knees. This couldn't be happening. This WAS NOT happening. I couldn't think. 'Where's the Professor? Maria? Let me talk to them.' I said in a croaky voice.

'I'm sorry, my dear. They're both-'

'NO!' I roared, putting my hands over my ears. 'No....please don't say-'

I felt a hand on my shoulder. 'Berri, I can't help you if you won't let me.'

I pushed Ivo's hand off and glared at him. 'Explain, then.'

'It's a long story-'

'You think I care how _long_ it is?! I wake up, it's sixty-eight years later and you think I care _how long it is?!_ EXPLAIN!'

Ivo didn't seem to mind being yelled at. 'You already know, of course, that you were created as Ultimate Lifeform. Professor Gerald programmed you with many amazing and very powerful abilities. And for about 13 years, he was happy with you.'

'_Happy_ with me? What- hey, when I was thirteen? That's when.....'

'When your symptoms started, yes. But it wasn't because of that. I'll get to that in a minute. No, he really changed his mind because he learned that he could make an even stronger lifeform. He had met the leader of the Black Arms, a very powerful alien race. His name was Black Doom. The Professor made a deal with Black Doom; He would give him the chaos emeralds if Black Doom would give up some of his blood for the new project. His blood would make the project stronger than ever.'

My body shook with anger. 'So. I was abandoned because I wasn't strong enough?'

'That's...the bottom line of it, my Dear.'

My anger was overwhelming now. No! I must not get any more angry. Notangrynotangrynotangrynotangrynotangrynotangryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Ivo saw my trouble and produced a syringe from seemingly nowhere. I eyed it warily, still barely in control. 'What's that?'

'Calming medication. Affects nothing but the anger emotion.'

I sighed in relief and stuck out my arm. 'You came prepared.'

Ivo injected the medicine into my bloodstream and I immediately calmed down. In the place of anger, however, came a million thick tears streaming down my cheeks and splattering all over the floor. I was sobbing like a little girl lost, something I hadn't done since I was the age of five. 'W-wh-why w-would he d-do this? Why? Wh-why did Maria l-let h-h-h-him?'

'Maria was reluctant at first,' Ivo said slowly.

'Reluctant? _Reluctant?_ What the fuck! _Reluctant?_'

'I could not believe it either when I first heard of it....' he said uncomfortably.

I put my head in my hands. 'Just- keep talking. How does my condition fit into this shit?'

Ivo paid no attention to my language. 'Your condition, yes. Maybe it would be best if you looked for yourself.' He pulled out an old-looking disk from his pocket and removed the protective plastic he had put over it. Then he inserted the disk into a laptop (also brought out of nowhere) and gave it to me. I opened it dreading what I might find. Still crying heavily, I found myself on my own progress file.

As I scanned its contents my eyes became more and more horrified. When I finished I shut the laptop and let out a strangled breath. 'So.' I said with a clear tremor in my voice. 'The Professor secretly injected me with a virus of his own creation, just to make it look like he had no choice but to shut me down. He only told Maria the truth months later and she did nothing. Then she and the Professor finished the creation of the new Ultimate Lifeform, _Project Shadow._' I spat the name.

Ivo kept his eyes on the ground.

'Professor Gerald Robotnik effectively killed me because I wasn't _strong enough._'

The floor was apparently very interesting.

My body was shaking. I knew that if I were to continue like this, I would overcome the injection Ivo had given me.

I can't really remember when I stopped thinking. Just like always, it was like there was someone else controlling me. I was completely conscious and I realized what I was doing but I was powerless to stop myself. I couldn't even warn Ivo to get away from me. All I could do was hope that he had taken precautions against this.

Something hit me on the back of the head.

Ow.....

* * *

When I woke up but kept my eyes shut. Something metallic was holding me bridal style and it was extremely uncomfortable. I opened my eyes to find myself in a different room entirely with an orange robot holding me. A really ugly orange robot.

I let out a shriek and jumped out of the robot's arms. 'Wh-wh-wh-wh-'

'I see you're awake.'

I looked around. Ivo was sitting behind a desk behind me with his fingers laced. I was about to answer when a flash of pain burst in my head. I moaned and held my head in my hands.

'Headache?'

'Yeah.' The realization of what had almost happened suddenly hit me. 'I-I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to- are you hurt?' I stuttered. I would never have been able to forgive myself if I had hurt the boy I once considered to be a kid brother, no matter how much older (and uglier) he may be_._

Ivo smiled and put up his hand. 'No harm done. I managed to inject you with a much stronger dose before you hurt anyone, but unfortunately I had to knock you out. I'm sorry....'

'Heh! No, no! R-really! Thank you! It was my fault, if I hadn't gotten so angry at....ah.....' The realization of what I was angry about in the first place hit me and I hugged myself tightly, shivering.

Ivo looked pained. 'This must be terribly hard on you, my dear. I can't even begin to imagine-'

'Why?' I choked quietly.

'Beg your pardon?'

'Why didn't he tell me?' I was bawling now. 'I would've understood! I wouldn't have cared, he didn't have to....he didn't.....' I lost the ability to form comprehendible words, and soon I was just sobbing. I always had been quite emotional.

After a bit, I finally calmed down enough to ask one last question. 'Why did you reactivate me?'

His eyes lit up with something I could not determine. 'Well, firstly, I couldn't bear to leave you like this.....'

I allowed myself a small smile at this.

'...And secondly, I could use your help.'

I looked up. 'My help? Anything! Anything you want! It's a small price to pay....'

That strange glint in his eye appeared again. 'You have my thanks, my dear.'

'As you have mine. What do you need me to do?'

'My problem lies with a group of teenagers consisting of two hedgehogs, a fox, a rabbit, and an echidna,' Ivo stated. 'That have got the chaos emeralds in their sights. You see, I was conducting an experiment with them that went wrong and caused the biggest chaos control I'd ever seen. It transported the whole headquarters through time and space to a planet called Mobius. The chaos emeralds scattered again.'

I nodded. Fair enough.

'Mobius was inhabited by animals. The chaos emeralds corrupted these animals and they soon gave in to greed. Among them were two hedgehogs, two rabbits, a cat, a bee, a crocodile, chameleon, fox and echidna. They went in search of the chaos emeralds.  
Meanwhile, I had sent my robots to find the emeralds as well. They managed to collect most of them and bring them back to eggquarters.'

Uh, did he just say _egg_quarters?

'But the group of animals had learnt of the location of the base, and they came to steal the emeralds.'

'Another chaos control, right?'

'Correct, my dear. it sent us all back here, and now they're wrecking havoc down on Earth. I've found a way to send them back without sending the chaos emerald back with them, but I'll still need them for powering the machine.'

I understood. 'So you need me to get both the chaos emeralds and those retards?'

Ivo paid no attention to my language and nodded. 'There's no rush. You'd better have a few days to get used to life on Earth before trying anything. They're no match for you anyway.'

'Yeah. The professor made sure of that.'

* * *

Doctor Eggman watched as Berri strapped herself into his spaceship. All that nice-talk and smiling gave him a headache. It had been worth it, though. She was completely fooled, and all he had to do now was make sure she stayed fooled. If she didn't, if she found out, he'd be screwed. Seriously screwed. He didn't think she'd take too kindly to being lied to again. This had to be one of the most dangerous schemes he had ever come up with. If he succeeded, however, he would be rid of Sonic and his little furries forever.

And as for Project Beryl, well, she would soon be having a deja-vu experience. Only _this_ time, she would stay asleep. It's kind of hard to reactivate someone that's in pieces. It would be a mistake to keep someone as dangerous as her alive.

Eggman just managed catch himself before he laughed like a maniac.

**DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUNNNN! **

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***ducks rotten fruit* hey, I had to! Shut up! Anyway, I promise Sonic and peoples will be in the next chapter.....dunno about shadow....we'll see.**

**By the way, does anyone play Super Smash Brothers Brawl? Hehehe....Sonic's the name and speed's my game!**

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